


Beneath Thy Wings in Death's Twilight Kingdom (with gratitude to TS Eliot)

by cinderellasleftshoe



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Guardian Angels, Catholic Imagery, Dean Loves Literature, Detective Benny, Detective Dean Winchester, Eventual Smut, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2019-01-17 10:42:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12363948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cinderellasleftshoe/pseuds/cinderellasleftshoe
Summary: Dean is a New Orleans detective just trying to do good in the world. After almost every shift he stops at a shrine of St Jude, little more than a bench in the priests' vegetable garden in the neighborhood church. St Jude is the patron saint of police officers, but Dean isn't sure he believes in gods or saints. He does feel certain that someone or something watches over him. Dean isn't a man of god, but he believes in evil, so therefore, he has faith that there's some good out there somewhere. Just that the evil seems to have the upper hand. He doesn't pray in the conventional sense, I mean why? when you have no idea who or what is out there? Instead, he recites the poems and literature he loves. Lately, he's been reciting Eliot's "The Hollow Men." This is a very short story about Detective Dean Winchester and the guardian angel who hears him.(My debt to T.S. Eliot who wrote the poem "The Hollow Men," pieces of which Dean and Cas recite here and from which I shaped the emo title)





	Beneath Thy Wings in Death's Twilight Kingdom (with gratitude to TS Eliot)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheTwistedWillow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTwistedWillow/gifts).



> Thanks to my friends at the Destiel NaNoWriMo FB Group for the guardian angels prompt. They're a lovely group, and I'm having so much fun with them <3
> 
> The prompt was two images of guardian angels.
> 
> This title is awfully emo, but I’m feelin pretty goth girl tonite. Gifted to TheTwistedWillow because I've been enjoying her stuffs in response to these challenges.

Dean hit submit on his last report, turned out his desk light, casting the bullpen mostly in darkness. It had been a long, long day. He and his partner, Benny, thought when they showed up at that kid’s house this afternoon that all they were doing was busting up a stolen laptops and video game consoles ring of teenagers. They didn’t expect drugs, prostitution, and a high school teacher running the whole mess. It was kids. There was press. And Detective Dean Winchester wasn’t going home until he finished the reports. He’d sent Benny out after midnight -- he and Drea were pregnant with their first, and it could be going … _better_. Andrea’s morning sickness was constant, and she’d been hospitalized for dehydration and nausea a couple of weekends ago. Dean wanted Benny at home where he could keep an eye on his wife and Dean’s gestating goddaughter. For Benny’s little family, Dean could finish the reports alone.

Dean hopped out of the cab into the grey light of pre-dawn. He walked down Elysian Fields and turned the corner at Our Lady of Sorrows. He walked the twenty paces to the little bench in the courtyard garden behind the church. He took his usual seat on the bench, reached beneath, fingers easily finding the little box mounted under the seat. He removed a candle and placed it on the flat surface next to him. Taking his lighter from his coat pocket, he glanced around, but all the windows of the parsonage were dark. Parsonage? Dormitory? What did you call the place where the priests live? He lit the candle and closed his eyes and thought for a moment. Where was he? Ah, yes:

> _Here we go round the prickly pear_
> 
> _Prickly pear prickly pear_
> 
> _Here we go round the prickly pear_
> 
> _At five o'clock in the morning._

The whispered words fell from his lips in memory. Nearby, an early morning love bird sang to its mate by the little birdbath across the tomato plants from Dean’s seat at the shrine of St Jude.

> Between the idea
> 
> And the reality
> 
> Between the motion
> 
> And the act
> 
> Falls the Shadow
> 
> _For Thine is the Kingdom_

Dean paused and pulled free from his shirt the St Jude medal that hung at his throat. “Thank you,” he whispered, “whoever you are. I know you watch over me. Thank you for another day that I am alive to do good in this dark world. Thank you.”

Dean blew out his candle and waited as the sun rose above the rooflines for the wax to solidify. It didn’t take long. Then he slipped the candle back into its box beneath the bench. Rose. Took one more look around at the darkened windows, and walked quietly from the garden down the remaining three blocks to his little two-bedroom bungalow on Chartes in the Bywater. Too tired to even shower, he stepped out of his boots in the entryway. Hung his coat on the hook behind the door, and wandered into the kitchen to drink a glass of water with a couple of naproxen gel caps. Then, he moved silently through his house as the new morning light filtered in through the soft, white linen curtains. He undressed and dropped all his clothes into the hamper in the bathroom, where he brushed his teeth, avoiding his reflection in the mirror.

Ten more steps and he slipped naked between the sheets. His head settled into the pillow, and Dean was out. The angel, Dean’s guardian, placed the smallest kiss of grace on Dean’s forehead, renewing the protection and rest dwelling deep within Dean’s soul. Then the angel flicked his fingers. Dean’s front door locked itself and the smartphone Dean accidentally left in his pocket of his jeans in the hamper appeared on the bedside table. The angel plugged the phone into the charger, the tiniest of human acts, tracing his own hands over the habitual paths of his human charge. The angel took one last look at his deeply sleeping man. His lips flickered into the briefest of smiles, and then, he too was gone.

***

Benny had known the night was gonna go bad. He'd felt it when they rolled up on the darkened Mid-City house. The chill had crawled up his spine and sent a small shudder through his broad shoulders. Dean had looked at him in question, but Benny hadn’t said anything. He didn’t want to seem like the hoodoo-feelin’ Cajun everyone thought he was anyway. Benny had a reputation to live down, so he held his tongue on the shivers and the ghostly shadows writhing in his peripheral vision. Creepy, oily spirit things no one was gonna believe anyway. And Benny’d regret that choice for the rest of his days.

It was just supposed to be a look-see on grandma. Granddaughter hadn’t heard from her nana in a week, and nana wasn’t in great health. The uniforms had done a drive-by and a door knock for a wellness check, but a nephew had answered. He’d had a message on an old school answering machine from a woman who said she was his nana and she’d be on a cruise for a couple of weeks. The unis kicked it up to robbery-homicide because, in their words, “the guy was hinky.”

And hinky he was, Benny had thought. Guy looked nervous when two detectives showed up at his door asking about his nana. He let them in and offered to show them to the sitting room and get some coffee. And that’s when the girl had come through the kitchen shooting. Dean had jumped in front of Benny and pushed them both to the floor behind the couch, of course he had, we’re talking about Dean Winchester here. The hinky guy was dead before he hit the floor, and Dean had taken a hit just about at his diaphragm, and blood was pouring everywhichwhere. Benny thumbed his phone calling out the phrase that would rain hell down on this crime scene: “shots fired! Officer down! Repeat, shots fired! Officer down!” He clipped the headset to his ear and went through the motions with dispatch while he ripped off his outer layer of dress shirt and used it as a makeshift bandage to apply pressure to Dean’s stomach. So much blood. All over his hands, “get rescue the fuck here now!” Benny growled.

Dean saw the girl from the corner of his eye, and just after, he saw the metallic flash in her hands, “gun!” he shouted shoving Benny down behind the couch and falling onto him. Blood and brains from the nephew splattered across Dean’s shoulder and cheek. Fuck. And then the pain caught him. Gods his stomach was on fire. Benny was rolling him over and swearing and praying. Not in English; in French. Marie mère de Dieu. Aidez moi. And then, apparently for variety, ayudame, madre! Dean laughed. He had one and a half languages, maybe, two on a good day if he was feeling loose. Somehow the Spanish always came easier when he wasn’t nervous. Benny though. Rile Benny though, and brother was suddenly a linguist swearing in all the languages ever. Searing white pain shot through his body and he spat blood. Correction, this shit was not funny.

“Shots fired, officer down!” Repeat, shots fired, officer down!” Benny was shouting and Dean’s vision was blurring around the edges. Time stretched and snapped back and Dean was on a gurney being wheeled to an ambulance and Benny was saying something, “… motherfucker don’t you dare fucking go back to sleep Iwilllfuckingkillyoumyselfyoufuckingasshole…” Dean wanted to laugh but he did remember how well that turned out last time. And if he spit blood, he’d spit it into this fancy oxygen mask and that was no bueño. Time stretched out in front of him again…

“… we’re losing him!” Someone was shouting. And then a loud and fucking annoying alarm and everything went black.

But it wasn’t black over his eyes like a curtain, it was a three-dimensional black. Like walking in a theater in total darkness, “hello!” he called out. Where the fuck was he? Did this theater have an exit? “Hello!”

A whooshing of enormous, iridescent wings, darker than the blackened darkness of this place. “Dean,” the very low, very familiar voice said in shock. “What are you doing here? You’re not supposed to be here!”

“Looking for you, I think,” Dean said puzzled, one hand pressed to his stomach, why couldn’t he remember. An itch…

And then those shimmering wings wrapped around him, warm as water and soft as silk, and he was swept up in purest elation. Time snapped back.

Dean was lying on the gurney again, white hospital walls blurring by him. “He’s back!” someone shouted. Back where, Dean wondered? And then soft dry lips pressed to his forehead and the softest down feather touch brushed his cheek. “Holy Mother of God, he’s back!” another person shouted and the alarm kicked off and a steady beeping started. Someone else was shouting instructions. The names of drugs. His clothes were being cut off. Benny’s face. Why couldn’t he remember? He swallowed blood and didn’t choke as Benny pulled back the oxygen mask, “Cas… I think his name is ... where is…?” Dean mumbled.

“Sam?” Benny asked, “don’t worry about Sammy, brother. I’ll call him and get him down here. You just let them get the bullet out and don’t you fucking die on me you son of a bitch.”

The mask was back on and Dean drifted again into darkness. A hush of wings against his bare chest and he was wrapped in a strong, solid and warm embrace. The deep, gravely voice whispered against his ear: 

> Sunlight on a broken column
> 
> There, is a tree swinging
> 
> And voices are
> 
> In the wind’s singing
> 
> More distant and more solemn
> 
> Than a fading star.

Dean’s poem. The voice knew it. Dean’s guardian angel was here.

Then a soft kiss to his forehead and, “rest Dean, I have you now. Just rest. Everything is going to be fine.”

**Author's Note:**

> I really enjoyed this challenge - it's a little experimental, but I think it turned out pretty cool. Hope you all like it too.
> 
> ETA: Dunno. This one is staying with me. I might need to turn this into a longer story told in vignettes of the times when Dean's angel intervenes? What do all y'all think? Or does that sound way too Inception or The Adjustment Bureau?


End file.
